Pope's encyclical - personal approaches

[PhiloMed]

“Joined a CSA for the summer”

What is this one?

Community Supported Agriculture.

We purchase a “share” of crops from a local organic farmer and get a weekly delivery of whatever is in season and in abundance that week. It’s always a surprise and sometimes challenging to cook vegetables we are unfamiliar with. We enjoy it, though.

Some farmers will also sell a “share” of a cow i.e. half a cow, quarter of a cow. It will usually come butchered into reasonable family-sized packages of various cuts. A few hundred pounds of organic grass fed meat is great but you need the freezer storage for it.

 

[silver_moon]

I believe there’s research to support that losing a significant amount of weight can help the environment. I’m talking about myself, being about 130 pounds overweight. Losing weight means lower consumption of food and lower amounts of fuel to transport from point A to point B. Also more activity which possibly means less driving.

I got to this point for various reasons but one of them was eating large amounts of sweets and junk food. I’m able to eat pretty reasonable meals as long as I cut way back on those, avoid fast food, and be careful about eating in other restaurants.

 

[Corki]

Community Supported Agriculture.

We purchase a “share” of crops from a local organic farmer and get a weekly delivery of whatever is in season and in abundance that week. It’s always a surprise and sometimes challenging to cook vegetables we are unfamiliar with. We enjoy it, though.

Some farmers will also sell a “share” of a cow i.e. half a cow, quarter of a cow. It will usually come butchered into reasonable family-sized packages of various cuts. A few hundred pounds of organic grass fed meat is great but you need the freezer storage for it.

Thanks. We have the one for veggies at the Y (I don’t think it’s called a CSA) but the quantities are a lot. I’ll look into other ones that might be more small-family sized.

The beef thing is a great idea but probably on the “maybe in the future” list. I just looked up one online and a quarter is $10/pound. I’m going to have to weigh the consumerism vs environmentalism on that one a bit more.

 

[lynnvinc]

When we started out some 25 yrs ago, we looked around for things we could do – we had already made a commitment to living within 1 or 2 miles of work since our marriage in 1969 (at that time the issue was conservation of finite resources for future generations).

Above our breakfast table was a 5 bulb, 300 watt chandelier with amber chimneys aimed up, and we could hardly see anything (I was using that as my desk, while hubby used the dining table as his desk). We found an oak fixture with beveled glass at Walmart (the last one, floor model) on sale for $49, which required one bulb aimed down. We installed that with a 15 watt CF globe bulb, going from 300 to 15 watts!

I think once one puts their mind and heart into finding ways to reduce, reuse, recycle, etc, and says a few prayers for help, the solutions come flowing in. Simply wanting to save money is not much of a motivator in our rich country; wanting to reduce harms to others is a really great motivator.

We had a SunFrost frig for 22 yrs (until hubby made me give it up) and it used about 1/12 the electricity of the old, used frost-free clonker it replaced (we kept tabs on the monthy KWH for a long time) AND it paid for itself over its 22 years in savings, also by preserving veggies a lot longer (less wastage). Now our current frig is very efficient for the regular market, using about 3 times the Sunfrost, but the deal was, if we get the Volt (in 2012) and the solar panels (in 2013), the Sunfrost gets replaced.

RE the Chevy Volt, we thought it was a splurge, but wanted something fancy for our last car, since we’d been buying used cars all along, but even that is saving us $700 to $1000 a year, bec electricity (60% wind, 40% solar) is cheaper than gasoline. The solar panels, 5000 W, were very pricy, but we got the Fed tax rebate and a rebate from AEP (Texas energy provider) which brought the net price down to about $8700 installed by licensed solar installers. Since we are saving about $800 to $1000 on that per year, it made good economic sense. Also, my husband has just retired and I’m retiring in August, so the Volt and solar panel savings really help in our retirement.

If you are getting an EV or solar panels, be sure to do it while you are working and earning well, so you can get the tax rebates.

 

[lynnvinc]

Here’s a similar thread I started some 3 years ago, which has some ideas for mitigating AGW and other problems. It was closed bec of no activity (be sure to keep this one going…). I think there are some good ideas on it:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=656903

 

[lynnvinc]

I believe there’s research to support that losing a significant amount of weight can help the environment. I’m talking about myself, being about 130 pounds overweight. Losing weight means lower consumption of food and lower amounts of fuel to transport from point A to point B. Also more activity which possibly means less driving.

I got to this point for various reasons but one of them was eating large amounts of sweets and junk food. I’m able to eat pretty reasonable meals as long as I cut way back on those, avoid fast food, and be careful about eating in other restaurants.

That’s definitely on my “to do” list

 

[Corki]

Here’s a similar thread I started some 3 years ago, which has some ideas for mitigating AGW and other problems. It was closed bec of no activity (be sure to keep this one going…). I think there are some good ideas on it:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=656903

Yes, some good ideas in that thread. Thanks for the reminder.

But I was hoping that we could discuss some practice applications not limited to global warming. The Pope’s encyclical is much broader than that. Embracing a better relationship with human ecology may or may not involve activity that addresses global warming.

 

[agnes_therese]

Here’s a similar thread I started some 3 years ago, which has some ideas for mitigating AGW and other problems. It was closed bec of no activity (be sure to keep this one going…). I think there are some good ideas on it:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=656903

Those “small things” you refer to can make a big difference if enough people do them. We should never think “Oh, I’m only one person, my plastic bottles/fuel consumption/electricity use/etc. don’t matter.” They do.

 

[lynnvinc]

Yes, some good ideas in that thread. Thanks for the reminder.

But I was hoping that we could discuss some practice applications not limited to global warming. The Pope’s encyclical is much broader than that. Embracing a better relationship with human ecology may or may not involve activity that addresses global warming.

Well, that thread was to address GW, but I’ve found over the years that nearly everything I do to mitigate GW also mitigates a host of other problems, environmental and non.

One comes to understand that there is a GHG component to nearly every product and water (which needs energy to pump & heat it). I consider GW to be sort of an umbrella issue – not only a very serious issue, but also one which when truly mitigated in all the various ways we can mitigate it helps to mitigate many other problems, and also saves money and strengthens the economy.

Let’s take gasoline, for example. There is a toll in its extraction (esp in Africa and the Amazon region, and now the Canadian tar sands, and many other places as well – destroying tribal people’s subsistence base, polluting their water, etc). There is a toll in its processing (cancer alleys in E. Texas and Louisiana). There is a toll in spills/leaks/explosions. And, of course, there is a toll in its combustion – local pollution, acid rain, and global warming. As we know, there are also conflicts over oil and Ken Saro Wiwa was killed for his stance against Shell polluting his tribal area in Nigeria.

So anything we can do, such as hypermiling, running multiple errands, keeping tires inflated, engines tuned, and moving closer to work/shops/schools on next move, bicycling, public transportation, etc would help in all these issues.

 

[lynnvinc]

Those “small things” you refer to can make a big difference if enough people do them. We should never think “Oh, I’m only one person, my plastic bottles/fuel consumption/electricity use/etc. don’t matter.” They do.

I know that is the problem & there is no “silver bullet.” So I’ve developed this LITTE WAY OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALING (after St. Therese’s Little Way of Spiritual Childhood):

We are faced with enormous environmental problems that harm people, and destroy property and wildlife. Everyone needs to help solve these.

St. Therese of the Child Jesus teaches us the Little Way of Spiritual Childhood. She felt she could not perform the big mortifications of the saints. We also feel we cannot go back to a lifestyle without cars and modern conveniences.

St. Therese, though, was determined to become a saint. She read, “Whoever does not accept the kingdom of God as a little child will not enter into it.” Following this, St. Therese in childlike simplicity offered God all of her small deeds of ordinary life, and placed all her trust in God to help her scale the cliffs of perfection and avoid temptations. This is the Little Way. “Not everyone can fast, or wear hair shirts, or spend hours in prayer,” she used to say, “but everyone can love!” One thing alone is needful: all must be done for love of God.

What is needed to solve the big environmental problems is a life of many small deeds done out of love for God. We need to offer many small prayers to help us understand the problems and find solutions, and then more prayers to carry out our actions in daily life.

We need faith that our small deeds will, with God’s grace, amount to more than a meaningless drop in the bucket, letting Jesus multiply our fish & loaves; Mother Teresa said our love makes our small deeds infinite. We need hope that we will one day be rejoicing with God in heaven, so we need not be too concerned with worldly riches, comforts, and status. We need the charity of joyfully sharing God’s bounty and beauty with others around the world and in the future by helping to save the Earth.

 

[Corki]

Well, that thread was to address GW, but I’ve found over the years that nearly everything I do to mitigate GW also mitigates a host of other problems, environmental and non.

True but there are some things that we can do to develop a better human ecology that are not related to global warming at all. Someone posted a headline about the encyclical that said “Have a family, grow a garden be holy” as a sound bite summary. Having more children is a good approach to human ecology but is not a direct effort to mitigate global warming. Same thing with most home gardens. Unless you have a lot of land and time to devote to it, the effect will be negligible or even negative on global warming but the process of gardening brings us closer to the earth.

I shop at farmer’s markets when I can primarily to support local farmers. If I found out that the net result did not mitigate any global warming, I would still want to support local farmers.

 

[lynnvinc]

True but there are some things that we can do to develop a better human ecology that are not related to global warming at all. Someone posted a headline about the encyclical that said “Have a family, grow a garden be holy” as a sound bite summary. Having more children is a good approach to human ecology but is not a direct effort to mitigate global warming. Same thing with most home gardens. Unless you have a lot of land and time to devote to it, the effect will be negligible or even negative on global warming but the process of gardening brings us closer to the earth.

I shop at farmer’s markets when I can primarily to support local farmers. If I found out that the net result did not mitigate any global warming, I would still want to support local farmers.

But some of those things really do help mitigate AGW in subtle ways, and if we rear our children to be good stewards of God’s creation that would really help a lot. So whatever God grants us (we were not granted children, which was a sorrow for us for many decades), we must do our best by His gifts and offer them up to God’s greater glory.

By doing many little (and some big) environmental things I feel I have adopted the children of the world, which has filled my life with joy.

We used to be more involved in local produce (which reduces “food miles”) and organic produce (which reduces manufacture of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides & dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico) … tho we’ve back-slid in recent years & need to get into them again.

Also we need to get back into our veggie garden & composting. The only thing we have going now are fruit and veggie producing trees. Now that I’m retiring in a couple of months and hubby already retired last month, we can get back into those.

We used to grow some tomatoes then buy a bushel from a local farmer and can for the year. Need to start that again. As it is with my work I haven’t even had time to see the doctor or dentist or celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Easter or Mem Day properly (it was an extremely hectic last 3 years) so I really look forward to getting back into all these things which we really enjoyed. And my Carmelite prayer life.

The only thing I can think of that is an environmental/human harm not related to AGW in some way is nuclear power (if indeed it does not add as much GHGs as fossil fuels in its total cradle to grave operations). We should try and reduce our use of it, since uranium mining harms Native Americans and Africans (esp in Niger) and their subsistence base. Up north in the Chicagoland area we were on ComEd’s 75% nuke, 25% coal electricity, so when we reduced our electricity use by 1/4 and eventually 1/3 (all cost effectively, saving us money), we were not only helping reduce local and regional pollution, GW, MTR, and coal ash spill risk, but also those harms from nuclear.

 

[agnes_therese]

I know that is the problem & there is no “silver bullet.” So I’ve developed this LITTE WAY OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALING (after St. Therese’s Little Way of Spiritual Childhood)

As a long-time devotee of the Little Flower, I really appreciate this approach. Thank you for your posts!

:flowers:

 

[pnewton]

Embracing a better relationship with human ecology may or may not involve activity that addresses global warming.

I am glad that we are focusing on the encyclical here. There are plenty of global warming threads where one can debate, if one has a particular passion. From paragraph 111

“Ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources. … To seek only a technical remedy to each environmental problem which comes up is to separate what is in reality interconnected and to mask the true and deepest problems of the global system.”

For those that have not read the whole thing, the Holy Father grounds the work in the relationship between God and creation, and Man’s anthropologic error being the cause, global warming is just a result. If we are to emulate him in the setting of the Christian family, then we need to go beyond these effort we are cataloguing here. I would say the most critical response parents can have in raising children is to address the underlying selfishness that is inherent in us all, especially children, where we always desire more, more and more. Reducing our level of self-centered consumption will not only have the most desirable ecological impact, but it will have the even more desirable impact on our own sanctification, and that of our children.

For example, if we combine trips, instead of teaching kids about carbon emissions and saving money, teach first about how saving gas leaves more for the poorer nations, as well as leaving more for them, their children, and all children to come. While economics and climatology may be subject to attack when they get older, charity is not. Putting the needs of others first, is not.

I thought I would throw this out as I know I am not the only one that has to play teacher at home.

 

[agnes_therese]

I thought I would throw this out as I know I am not the only one that has to play teacher at home.

And it’s not only just with the children of the house.

 

[3DOCTORS]

While reading the encyclical it came to me that among other things, I would like to be part of a tree planting effort. I drive around my city and see so many instances of private and public cutting down of what look to me to be perfectly healthy trees that aren’t in the way of underground lines or anything that I can tell, and it makes me sad.

So, trees!

 

[Corki]

While reading the encyclical it came to me that among other things, I would like to be part of a tree planting effort. I drive around my city and see so many instances of private and public cutting down of what look to me to be perfectly healthy trees that aren’t in the way of underground lines or anything that I can tell, and it makes me sad.

So, trees!

When we built our house, we purposely picked a lot that did not have any trees that would need to be cut and then we planted a whole bunch. They didn’t all survive the last big drought but the ones that did are such a joy.

The local electric company had a tree planting effort last fall. You could sign up to get free trees to plant. The Arbor Day Foundation sponsors a lot of tree planting events in public areas too.

 

[pensmama87]

When I was reading this thread I thought of Simcha Fisher’s essay Big Families Say “Laudato Si!” Not that smaller families or single people couldn’t implement some of the same things, but it requires a definite deliberation, especially when income is sufficient to provide a much more wasteful lifestyle. I remember before we had kids, DH and I thought we were “green” but really we wasted a lot - food, packaging, energy, you name it. We conserve much more than we used to.

My big aspiration is to turn our backyard into not only a fun place for our kids to play, but also a garden space. We grow herbs and a few veggies now, but we also have the sunlight and rainfall that would make a few fruit trees a viable option, as well as berry bushes. I’m starting to learn how to preserve food from various methods. Frugality is a big motivator, but I also find that I really like knowing about how food is grown and that I’m teaching very valuable life skills to my kids that I just didn’t have growing up, when I thought food came from a store pretty much ready to go.

 

[DarkLight]

For those of us who don’t have kids - hand wash. Clothing that isn’t stained can be done by hand with minimal effort. I’ve started doing most of my clothing by hand to save on trips to the laundromat.

 

[lynnvinc]

I am glad that we are focusing on the encyclical here. There are plenty of global warming threads where one can debate, if one has a particular passion. From paragraph 111

“Ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources. … To seek only a technical remedy to each environmental problem which comes up is to separate what is in reality interconnected and to mask the true and deepest problems of the global system.”

For those that have not read the whole thing, the Holy Father grounds the work in the relationship between God and creation, and Man’s anthropologic error being the cause, global warming is just a result. If we are to emulate him in the setting of the Christian family, then we need to go beyond these effort we are cataloguing here. I would say the most critical response parents can have in raising children is to address the underlying selfishness that is inherent in us all, especially children, where we always desire more, more and more. Reducing our level of self-centered consumption will not only have the most desirable ecological impact, but it will have the even more desirable impact on our own sanctification, and that of our children.

For example, if we combine trips, instead of teaching kids about carbon emissions and saving money, teach first about how saving gas leaves more for the poorer nations, as well as leaving more for them, their children, and all children to come. While economics and climatology may be subject to attack when they get older, charity is not. Putting the needs of others first, is not.

I thought I would throw this out as I know I am not the only one that has to play teacher at home.

I totally agree. That was my burning motive all along – to reduce my harms to others around the world (and in the context of becoming a Carmelite and seeking to become a better person). I used to keep an image in my mind’s eye of a starving, emaciated African Madonna & Child to get me going…out composting, and other things that take some gumption.

And my efforts also included outreach to others, but because I couldn’t get people to do the right thing bec it was the right thing, I’ve been bringing in the money saving thing (and we have to our surprise saved many $1000s by mitigation AGW over the past 25 yrs), but that doesn’t work either. No soap, they couldn’t care less – about doing the right thing OR saving money.

And now the Env 360 Yale group has found that “Linking Disasters to Climate Makes Skeptics Less Likely to Donate” - see e360.yale.edu/digest/linking_disasters_to_climate_makes_skeptics_less_likely_to_donate/4468/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+YaleEnvironment360+%28Yale+Environment+360%29

We REALLY have our work cut out for us – the text I use calls them grand environmental “challenges,” not “problems” – a grand human challenge, that frankly Christians have always had…helping people to link to others and become better people, truly concerned about and connected to others thru God. However, this time around with a huge portion of humanity’s well-being at stake, this deeper conversion is a must…a really terrifically GRAND CHALLENGE.

I’ve become convinced that prayer is a must.